If asked to narrow down to one item the content issue that has caused us the most headaches, eaten up the most of our time unnecessarily and caused us the most stress, it would be easy: comments on stories.

What started out as a new and cool way to promote reader engagement, enhance our product, and dig up new angles on stories and new sources for them has turned into, well, I don't know what.

Anonymous commenting was the first thing to be eliminated as they took a frighteningly ugly tone and it was hoped the move to Facebook commenting - you have to have a Facebook account to comment on our site - would weed out those just there to attack others or just to be mean.

To a great extent, it worked, but we still see the attempts to create fake accounts by people wanting to attack others without putting their name to it.

More surprisingly, though, are these two things: People who are willing to have their name out there while saying some really mean things, and a basic lack of feeling and/or compassion sometimes exhibited by commenters.

Most of the time now, when someone calls, mad at us, to complain about a story online they are not actually mad about the story. They are upset at the comments. Some whose brother has just died in a motorcycle crash does not want to read that the person deserved it for not wearing a helmet.

Over time it seems like a lot of the usefulness of allowing comments has waned and the reasons to not allow them have grown.

I'm curious what you think: How much value does the commenting system hold and would you allow it to continue if you were in charge?